


Applied Geometry

by codswallop



Series: Not Your Average Threesome 'Verse: John/Lestrade + Sherlock [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexuality, M/M, Multi, Threesome - M/M/M, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-15
Updated: 2011-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-26 02:26:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is curious, John gets upset, and Lestrade is the Best Boyfriend Ever. A continuation of the relationship story begun in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/123845">On Lestrade's Flawed Heart</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/134666">Triangulations</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Applied Geometry

It began as a simple matter of proximity. Proximity and sleep deprivation: or at least, that was what John told himself. But when Sherlock _would_ climb into his bed and fall asleep there at random, intermittent three-in-the-mornings, what could anyone expect? It was dark, he was only about one-quarter awake, and there was a warm body pressed up against his in the cold night--who could blame John Watson for wrapping an arm around it, pulling it close against his chest, and burying his nose in the fragrant hollow of its neck?

It wasn’t that he mistook Sherlock for Lestrade, exactly, because...well, even mostly-asleep, that wasn’t really a mistake one could make. It was more that John was so tired that it didn’t seem to matter. Not when he’d been trudging around Camden for most of the past three days and nights, cataloguing and surveilling all the shops with signs that contained the letter Q. And it wasn’t a problem, anyway, until a couple of hours later, when John’s right thumb woke up a bit before the rest of him did and decided to amuse itself by tweaking at the nipple it was resting on top of, scraping across it gently and then tracing around in swirling lazy circles, just to see if it could make a hard little peak rise up to meet it inside the thin t-shirt fabric.

It could.

John woke up mid-thumbstroke, realised what he was doing (and _to whom_ ), and froze.

Perhaps Sherlock hadn’t noticed. Perhaps he was still asleep?

Sherlock shifted a little, and his hand came up to press against John’s, grinding his thumb more purposefully into that raised nub of flesh. “Oh,” he said. “That’s made me go hard.” His voice was a sleepy-sounding rumble, faintly accusatory.

“Has it?” John asked, doubtful. Sherlock couldn’t possibly mean what John thought he meant.

“Yes, it has.” Sherlock picked up John’s hand and moved it lower, and...yes, it had, he did, he was. John gave him a reflexive squeeze, testing, and Sherlock inhaled audibly, almost a gasp. Then he entwined their fingers firmly together and moved John’s hand inside his pyjama bottoms, using it to stroke himself.

Sherlock didn’t do this, John’s tired brain insisted, ergo it could not be happening. A very vivid dream, perhaps. The early-morning half-light lent a surreal atmosphere to the event, along with his own fugue-like state of exhaustion, and so, against all reason, John simply went with it. The whole thing took less than two minutes and felt more clinical than sensual, a brisk and efficient rubbing as if there were an itch he was helping Sherlock to scratch, and before John could really begin to process the dubious wisdom of what he was doing, it was already ending: Sherlock shuddered and stiffened, a wet warmth flooded over John’s fingers in several quick pulses, and then the long muscles relaxed against him all at once.

Sherlock sighed and stretched contentedly, arching his back. He raised up on one elbow and hitched his t-shirt up over his head, removed John’s hand from his pants and wiped it off with the wadded-up fabric, gave himself a quick scrub, then tossed the soiled shirt into a corner and settled back down into the pillow. Before John could remember how to form audible sounds again, let alone intelligible ones, Sherlock was snoring lightly. Not faking. Actually asleep.

“What,” John said softly, falling over onto his his back and widening his eyes at the ceiling. “What the. Oh _god_ how am I going to explain this to Lestrade.” He pulled a pillow over his face and lay there hating everything about his life for five minutes, then kicked off the duvet and sighed his way downstairs to go make coffee.

*

“I don’t see why you have to make a whole production about it,” Sherlock said irritably, when John, now breakfasted and dressed, sat him down to have A Talk later that morning. Or, anyway, John sat. Sherlock pretzeled himself into an impossible position in his favourite armchair and sulked. “What is there to discuss? You were there, I was aroused--it’s all very normal, or so I’m given to understand. Surely you can’t be as shocked as all that.”

“I’m not shocked,” John insisted. “Well--all right, I am, yes, I always find you shocking; I suppose the surprising part is that you still have the ability to shock me. Let me be clearer. I’m not shocked, or I shouldn’t be, to find out that you do have occasional physical needs of that sort. I _am_ extremely taken aback to discover that you would ever want to involve me. In your sexual acts. In any way.”

“I don’t!” said Sherlock. “Oh, for god’s sake. As I said: You were _there_. You initiated it, in fact, if you want to get technical about it. And I suppose I was...curious, that’s all. I do get curious. About you. On occasion.” Sherlock’s voice and posture managed to convey how thoroughly distasteful he found this admission.

John cleared his throat. “Curious,” he repeated. “About me...sexually?”

Sherlock gave an impatient snort and kicked at the chair back in lieu of an answer.

“I thought you didn’t _do_ sex!” John said, too thoroughly frustrated to stop the words or come up with better ones.

Sherlock flung himself upright and glared. “Crass. Presumptive. _Wrong._ ” He ticked the words off on his fingers, then threw his hands up and relaxed into a boneless heap again. “It is a rare thing with me,” he admitted. “I’ve done some experimenting, of course, and occasionally it’s been necessary as a means to an end. And of course there was the thing with Lestrade. In general I prefer to steer clear of it, yes, but on occasion, when I’m not otherwise preoccupied-- Why are you staring at me like that?”

“You didn’t have sex with Lestrade.” Statement of fact, a simple correction. The world had been swinging eccentrically in its orbit for John all morning long, but this one static truth he’d insist on.

“Well. Depends on your definition of sex, I suppose. He ejaculated. I didn’t. No penetration. He never undressed fully in front of me--didn’t want me to see the scar, I gather, though of course I’d deduced its existence by then. Where are you going?” Sherlock demanded, sitting up straight again.

“Out for a walk,” John said.

“Hold up, I’ll come along. You’re upset? Ah, I see...he’s never told you. But it wasn’t, you shouldn’t--five minutes, let me change into--John, wait!” Sherlock called down the stairs after him, too late. “Why on Earth does it matter _now_?”

*

“It was five years ago,” Lestrade said, looking sheepish, when John charged into his office and confronted him. “And it really wasn’t anything. I’d have told you, if you asked; I wouldn’t have lied about it.”

“No?” John leaned across the desk, cold and focused with anger. “What about that time when I asked you if you’d ever had a sexual relationship with Sherlock and you said no? That one not count?”

“We didn’t! It was just the once, it wasn’t even--” Lestrade got up from his desk and walked to the window, hand at the back of his neck. “Really, it was completely awful,” he admitted. “I’ve always regretted it. Wanted to forget it as soon as it happened. Look, do we have to talk about this _here_?”

John bowed his head for a minute, still braced against the desk. “No,” he said finally, looking up, deflated. “We don’t have to discuss it at all. Never mind. It was...ridiculous of me to come here. I apologise. I was just...well. It’s been a rather eye-opening morning, that’s all.”

“I’m at work,” Lestrade pleaded. “There are murderers. I’m supposed to be catching them, ideally.”

“I know. I know. Really sorry, no idea what I was thinking. Sherlock’s been rubbing off on me, I--oh _god_.” John squinched his eyes shut as if in pain. “Right, we’ll talk later. Or...not, if you’d rather not, that’s fine. I’m off.”

“John,” Lestrade said in halfhearted protest, then, “Yeah, come round tonight, we should talk. I’m sorry, I can’t just--”

“Yes, fine, all right then.” John was already half out the door. “Later.” His mobile buzzed, and he turned it off without looking at it, then strode back down the hall, limping slightly.

*

“So, before we talk about this thing we’re not talking about, I need to tell you what happened with Sherlock this morning,” John announced to Lestrade that night, after they’d eaten and he’d washed the dishes and they’d both avoided saying much of anything to each other at all.

Lestrade’s eyebrows went up, but he listened. And nodded a lot. And said “Huh,” and then went very quiet for a while after John had finished. “All right,” he said, and got up to get another beer. He didn’t offer one to John.

“You’re upset,” John said.

“Well, give me a minute.” Lestrade drank most of his beer, then pressed the bottle to his forehead for a moment. Then he drank the rest, set down the bottle, and sighed. “No, it’s fine, it’s nothing, right? One-time thing. Weird. Not important. It’s fine.”

“But you’re upset,” John repeated.

“Do you want me to be? Should I be? For god’s sake, John. The two of you are practically joined at the hip, he sleeps in your bed half the time, I’ve seen you pet him like a, like a--but I’ve made my peace with it. It's a bit strange, yeah, but I’ve known since I met you I’d have to share you--”

“You don’t!”

Lestrade just looked at him.

“Not that way,” John insisted. “I mean, not in bed. Or. Okay, not _sexually_ in bed. Look, I’ll speak to him, we’ll set some rules. Maybe the sleeping thing needs to stop.”

“It’s all right.” Lestrade shrugged. “Really.” He came over and tugged at John’s sleeve, pulling him up from his chair. They went into the next room and settled on the sofa, where Lestrade wrapped himself around him with his chest against John’s back, warm and solid. “I honestly don’t mind it, any of it,” Lestrade said quietly into his neck.

“You don’t, do you?” John said, and felt himself relaxing a bit. Suddenly he went tense again.

“What?” Lestrade asked. “Am I-- Oh. Yeah, I still haven’t told you about...all right. So--”

“No, it’s not that. I just thought...I’ve been a bit of a jerk to Sherlock, haven’t I?”

Lestrade considered it, his chin digging into John’s shoulder. “Maybe?” John started to shift away, but Lestrade pulled him back. “Hold up. Sherlock is Sherlock. I seriously doubt he’s crying into his pillow. You should talk to him, yeah, I suppose, but I need you to know this first.”

“All right,” said John, and subsided against him, letting him talk.

*

It was pretty much as John had been imagining it, or trying not to imagine it, all day: Sherlock had been staying at Lestrade’s place during one of his more down-and-out phases, had crawled into his bed one night, and Lestrade had been too tired (he said) to kick him out.

“Too tired?” John said, sceptically.

“Well, and I was attracted to the bastard, yeah!” Lestrade said. “Christ. I’d only known him a few months. He wasn’t on anything at the time, I’m pretty sure; I never would have let him, if...and I still don’t know what he was playing at; some experiment or other, I suppose. Nothing but scorn and cold looks for weeks, and then that night he was suddenly all hands, he wanted to touch me _everywhere_ , and--”

“I don’t need the full details,” John said.

“Right, well, anyway. And then he was gone the next morning; didn’t see him for ages. I felt terrible, especially since he didn’t-- I thought I’d-- And when he finally turned up again, it was all business as usual. I tried to apologise and he shrugged it off. ‘It was a consensual encounter,’ that was all he’d say.”

John absorbed it. “Did he stay with you after that?”

“Yeah. Few times. And we’d...you know, after a case, the way he gets. There was...touching. But not sexual. Not really.”

John turned his head and gave him a side-eyed look.

“Really!” Lestrade insisted. “It’s like...now, with you. I mean he’s not exactly shy, is he?”

John started to say a couple of things, and stopped. Lestrade waited.

“Nothing,” John said finally. “Okay. Yeah. Can I go home and think about this? I’m not angry, I just hadn’t thought of it being like that, with the two of you. I just want to...”

“All right, yeah,” Lestrade said, looking upset again. “Go on.”

“I’m not,” John said again, kissing him fiercely. “Look. Yes, I am ridiculously jealous, which makes no sense, and I’m not even sure who I’m jealous _of_ \--but I’m fine with it, or I will be, it’s just a lot. This day. Right?”

Lestrade made an uncertain _hmm_ -sound.

“Come round tomorrow after work,” John suggested. “We’ll have a really awkward dinner and see how long we can all avoid meeting each other's eyes. Then you and Sherlock can, I don’t know, argue over cold cases or something, and we’ll all get on with pretending none of it ever happened.”

“Well, since you make it sound so appealing.”

“It’ll be fine.” John kissed him again, then got up and stretched. “Promise.”

*

“Three-way!” Sherlock announced, bursting into the kitchen that night while John was making a meditative before-bedtime cup of tea and trying to decide how, or whether, to apologise to him for that morning.

He dropped the mug, which shattered on the floor. “What?!”

“We should have one,” Sherlock said, leaning in the doorway and not offering to help him pick up shards of ceramic. “Obviously. You, me, and Lestrade. It’s the perfect solution.”

John decided that staring and blinking was really the only possible response.

“Three-way sex,” Sherlock clarified.

“Right. I am not discussing this tonight,” John said, rummaging through drawers to find a cleanish cloth for the floor.

“Then we can discuss it tomorrow?” Sherlock asked hopefully. He came over and hopped up to sit on the worktop. “I’ve been doing research on some possible positions; there are pictures I could show you, if you like.”

“Pictures? Pictures of-- No. Sherlock, no. All right. I’m sorry. Clearly, you do deserve an apology from me about this morning; I apologise, then. I reacted badly to...well, to every aspect of the situation, really, and if you’d like to talk about it, I’m certainly willing.”

Sherlock sighed loudly. “Talk is boring, John. Relationship talk is _crushingly dull._ I’d much prefer to take a more active approach to the problem. Purely on a one-time basis, you understand; I don’t see this as something I’d like to become involved in as a habit, although we’ll see how it goes, I suppose.”

John turned his back and began clearing up the mess on the floor. “I’m done with this conversation,” he informed Sherlock. “I apologised; I offered to discuss it; we’re through with it. You can stop taking the piss now.”

“I never ‘take the piss,’” Sherlock said, with obvious distaste.

“Well, whatever you’re doing, you can stop.” John put the teacup fragments into the bin and dusted off his hands. “Lestrade’s coming round for dinner tomorrow night. You’re welcome to join us, but I’m warning you right now, if you bring any sort of pictures to the table, I will move out.”

“No, you won’t,” Sherlock said.

“No, I won’t, but I’ll be very annoyed.” John headed for the stairs.

“What about crime scene pictures?”

“Mm, better, but still no. Good night, Sherlock,” John called back down from the landing, and locked the bedroom door behind himself, as loudly and ostentatiously as possible.

*

He was still caught up, he found, in the mental image of a younger, curious Sherlock climbing into bed with Lestrade. Lestrade would have been younger, too: browner-haired and thinner, startled but not unwilling. John wasn’t sure exactly why it bothered him so, thinking about the two of them together, years before they’d meet. And then suddenly he _was_ sure, more or less, which was even more disturbing.

It was nearly eleven at night, not too late to phone Lestrade. “I am a complete jerk,” he said, as soon as Lestrade picked up. “I think I’ve been going on the assumption that I’m the only person who’s ever been able to connect with Sherlock. It’s not true, is it?”

“You really are much better with him than I ever was,” Lestrade told him. “Much more patient.”

“ _And_ I’m the one who technically sort of cheated on you this morning.”

“Hm,” Lestrade said. “Let’s not call it that. Anyway, good to know you’re not perfect. You’d never keep hanging out with the likes of me if you were. Did you talk to Sherlock?”

“A bit. Not really. He thinks a three-way sex scenario will solve everything.”

“He does not.”

“I’m hoping he’ll find something else to distract him before morning.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Lestrade said dubiously. “Dinner tomorrow, still?”

“If you’re up for it,” John agreed. “Feeling energetic?”

“Shut up,” Lestrade said. “I love you. Good night.”

*

There was a kidnapping in Harrow the next day, and a series of stabbings, apparently gang-related, in Croydon the day after that. The awkward conciliatory dinner was indefinitely postponed. Sherlock’s insane proposition went unmentioned by any of them, and John assumed it was one of those things which wouldn’t come up again, until a few nights later when he and Lestrade came home from the pub and found Sherlock sprawled across John’s bed.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Lestrade muttered. “All right--back to mine, then?”

“No, don’t go,” Sherlock said sleepily, sitting up and turning on the bedside lamp. “I thought we could do that thing now.”

John, who’d had several pints, started to laugh, shaking his head. “Impossible. You are just...impossible. Go on, get up, go.”

“Why? You have thought about it. You’re both intrigued.” Sherlock curled himself up into a ball and then stretched out again luxuriously, displaying himself; he was wearing tight, short white boxer briefs and nothing else. “Or I could just watch the two of you. I’d like that, I think.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John started to say, but Lestrade cut him off.

“No,” he said. “You two.”

John whipped round to glare at him. “Lestrade! Don’t play along with him.”

“I’m not.” Lestrade shrugged, hands in his jacket pockets, looking suddenly shy and eager. “I have thought about it. Thought about it a lot, in fact, if you want to know.”

"Okay," John said, beginning to pace. "Okay. You've thought about it. That's... Are you drunk? I think you're a bit drunk. Am I drunk? I should be more drunk. I need another drink."

"Calm down," Sherlock said. "I'm not going to jump on anyone. I just think it would be interesting. It can't hurt anything. We're all in this relationship; what difference would it make if we just--"

"We're... What, what?" John cried. " _You_ are not in this relationship, Sherlock. I know you may think--"

"He's not?" Lestrade interrupted. "John."

John turned and walked out of the room, started to go down the stairs, then turned around and went back up again, unbuttoning his shirt.

"All right," he said. "Let's do this. Let's get it over with, because apparently no one's going to just take my word for it that it's a bad idea. No one just watches, though. I'm not having that."

"It's fine," Lestrade said, exchanging a look with Sherlock. "We don't have to do anything. We're just talking. We can talk in bed, and see what happens, can’t we? See how it goes.”

*  
It went _incredibly badly_. None of them knew quite where to look, or where to touch; Sherlock insisted on making loud suggestions using clinical terms that made Lestrade wince; there were far more limbs in the bed than anyone knew what to do with; and John started laughing nervously and couldn’t stop until he got the hiccups, which finally killed the mood entirely. None of them had been able to get more than half-hard, anyway.

“This is horrible,” Sherlock announced finally. “Ouch, get off, my leg’s going numb. I don’t see why you wouldn’t just let me watch the two of you.”

“Because that would be creepy,” John told him.

“Prude.”

“Freak,” John said, and Sherlock got up and stalked out of the room, very dignified and tall, wearing nothing.

“Oh, god,” John sighed, and started to get up and go after him, but Lestrade held him back.

“Cool off for a minute,” he suggested.

“I can’t believe you thought this would be an okay idea.” John shrugged him off and went to put on pants and a t-shirt.

“I’m sort of shocked you’re having such a problem with it,” Lestrade admitted, lying back on the pillows, hands behind his head, watching John with a frown. “I mean, you’re the one who-- All right. Never mind. You were right, fine, it wasn’t a good idea.”

“Do you really think we’re in a three-way relationship with him?”

“I wasn’t calling it that, but...in what way are we not?”

“You’re my boyfriend,” John said angrily. “Sherlock is Sherlock. I don’t want to think of it that way.”

Lestrade spread his hands. “Then don’t think of it that way. He clearly does, though. Honestly, I’m incredibly flattered.”

John shot him an exasperated look and went down to Sherlock’s room. The door was half open, and Sherlock was lying flat on his bed--clothed, thank god--making evil sounds on his violin. John sat down on the edge of the bed at a polite distance and waited for him to stop.

“It doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” Sherlock said, breaking off in the middle of a shriek.

“No, it doesn’t,” John agreed. “I’m really, really sorry, love.”

“Don’t touch me,” Sherlock said, when John stretched out a tentative hand. “I feel like I’m nothing but nerve endings and skin right now. It’s intolerable.”

“All right,” said John, and leaned back against the headboard, closing his eyes. “Do you want me to stay? Or go?”

“I don’t care,” Sherlock said sullenly, and picked up his violin again, but not the bow, this time; he lay on his back and plucked meditative arpeggios until John drowsed off there. At some point Lestrade came downstairs, took the violin from Sherlock’s unprotesting hands, put out the light, and wedged himself in between them to fall asleep with his head in John’s lap.

*

Lestrade and John argued the next day, sort of, when John went to his flat after work. John said, not really joking, that he was tired of Lestrade’s being so saintly and well-adjusted all the time, and Lestrade said he thought perhaps they ought to spend some time apart until John had worked out what he wanted and from whom. John couldn’t say what he thought of that without shouting, and he didn’t want to hit anything, so he said “All right, phone you in a few days, then,” very clipped and pale, and went home.

Sherlock closed the laptop quickly when John came in. “What is it? More positioning research?” John demanded, and limped over to open the computer back up. Sherlock didn’t try to stop him. It wasn’t porn he’d been looking at. Some sort of mathematics site. Lines, points, vectors and graphs. John glanced down and saw that Sherlock had been taking notes, pages and pages of notes with rough geometrical designs sketched out, scribbled over angrily, notated and labeled carefully with English and Greek letters in Sherlock’s neat, minute handwriting. Sherlock moved his hands to cover the pages, then stopped and forced his hands back down into his own lap, enduring John’s puzzled silence.

“This is...” John picked up one of the papers. “Wow. This is, is this supposed to be...us?”

“It doesn’t work,” Sherlock said. “It’s an impossible shape.”

“I don’t think you can calculate relationships that way,” John told him gently.

“I know that, you idiot.” Sherlock snatched the page back from him, wadded it up and chucked it viciously into the bin by the desk. “It’s soothing to try and put it in those terms, that’s all. Or, anyway, it was at first. Until all the angles started going wrong. Now it’s nothing but a nightmare and a headache. Very apt, I’d say.” He got up and fetched his coat.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” Sherlock said, and left.

John stayed at the desk studying the remaining sketches and equations, forgetting to sit down until his leg gave out beneath him, and then he collapsed involuntarily into the chair and kept looking, fascinated. Numbers and angles and degrees, isosceles and scalene, sine and cosine and tangent. Ages in years and days, heights in centimetres, months in service, number of cases solved, other notations John couldn’t identify. Penis sizes, probably; he wouldn’t put it past him. _J=90, S=190, G=150._ IQs? He hoped not. Anyway, too obvious. Eventually he sighed and shoved back the chair and went to rummage in the kitchen for last night’s leftovers.

*

Sherlock found another case, after another few days of tension and slammed doors. It was one of those cases that involved long consultations with men who smoked cigars and kept country houses with servants. He didn’t ask John to come along on this one, but he told him about it, bits of it, when it was all over and John was putting six careful stitches in his calf: old cellar in the woods, servants’ intrigue, two dead bodies, long-hidden treasure.

“You’re making this up,” John said, although knowing Sherlock’s typical cases, he probably wasn’t. “How’d you get so bashed up, then?”

“Fell into the cellar.”

“Right,” said John. “Anything else? Let me see.” He expected resistance, but Sherlock shed his shirt readily enough, and remained thoroughly docile while John cleaned some of the deeper scratches on his sides and back.

“You have the best hands of anyone,” Sherlock said complacently, arching into John’s touch. John glanced up at Sherlock’s face, frowning; his pupils were dilated, but apparently the same size.

“Cracked your skull, too? Follow my finger with your eyes. No, don’t turn your head, just--”

Sherlock turned his head and kissed him, lips soft and warm against his jaw.

“Oh,” said John.

“Why does it have to be a huge thing?” said Sherlock. “I’m in a good mood. I like you, and you feel nice.”

“You’re case-sexual,” John decided, moving away and putting his supplies back into his bag.

“Ha, ha.”

“Do you think of me as your boyfriend?” John wanted to know. Sherlock made a face.

“I hate _labels_ ,” he said crossly.

“I know. I know. Well, what about this: You used to be...sort of this way with Lestrade, yeah?”

Sherlock didn’t deny it, but he looked wary, possibly on the edge of flight, perched on the edge of the bed with his pale shoulderblades held like nervous wings.

“But then you had sex, and it went badly, and you...well, split up, I suppose, in a manner of speaking. I’m just afraid that if we--”

“It didn’t go badly,” Sherlock looked mystified. “And we didn’t split up; I’m still ‘with’ Lestrade, aren’t I, _in a manner of speaking._ Why do orgasms have to define everything for you?”

“They don’t! I’m sorry. I didn’t...I’m only trying to understand.”

“This conversation has become boring and counter-productive,” Sherlock said, whipping on his shirt again, and swept out of the room.

He slept in John’s bed that night, though, for the first time since the whole mess had started. John woke from restless dreams to find a hand on his shoulder, pressing him gently back against the bed. He wasn’t sure if Sherlock had just come in or if he’d been there all along, but he stayed there, anyway, a collection of cool-skinned silent angles that shouldn’t have been comforting to sleep next to, but somehow was.

*

John’s quarrel with Lestrade didn’t last, because it couldn’t; John simply phoned him up about a week after they’d last spoken and said “Can I come over?” and Lestrade said “Wish you would; I’m starved for it,” and when John showed up at approximately twelve minutes later Lestrade had him up against a wall even before the flat door had shut behind him, hands inside John’s clothes, kissing the breath out of him.

*

John told him about the conversation with Sherlock. “We’re like weapons,” John said, fingers lightly tracing at the edges of hard scar tissue. “All three of us, I suppose. We don’t have a good use when no one’s in danger, we’re just...hurtful.”

“That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard,” Lestrade complained, capturing John’s hand and relocating it to his hipbone, where it clasped in a grateful grip. “What are you, then? A gun, I suppose? And I’m a...what, a hunting dog? and he’s a, a knife?”

“Acid,” John said. “Burns through everything he touches.”

“Oh. That’s good, actually. I could see that. Fine, I’ll be your dog, then. You can domesticate me.”

“Hmm. But you can’t domesticate a gun, can you?”

“You can put a jumper on it and try and teach it to blend in,” Lestrade said, fitting himself into the curve of John’s body, and John had to laugh.

He waited until he thought Lestrade might be asleep before saying, “I don’t know how I feel about him still, not really.”

“No?” Lestrade murmured, pulling John’s arm around himself more tightly. “’S all right. I do.”

“Know how I feel about him, or how you do?”

“Same thing,” Lestrade said, after a long sleepy pause. “More or less...”

John waited for more, but that was all, it seemed.

*

The next day Lestrade came home with him, after work. He brought along the files on a bank job that had been stopped in progress by the Met the previous week, and he and Sherlock spent the better part of two hours recreating the sequence of events on the kitchen table using cooked and uncooked pasta, tomato sauce, and most of the fixings for the salad John was trying to assemble. Sherlock was attempting to prove that one of the robbers had sabotaged the job on purpose, and Lestrade didn’t think he could have, and both of them kept calling to John to bring them different bits of food and kitchen utensils to use in their construction. Finally John got fed up and came in and swiped a handful of carrot slices off the table, crunching on them defiantly.

Lestrade looked crushed. “You’ve just eaten half the security staff of Barclays.”

“Useless buggers,” John said, and squinted at the mess they’d made of the tabletop, tilting his head. “Which Barclays? Piccadilly?”

“The Strand!” Sherlock shouted. “Are you blind?”

John studied it for a bit longer, then dipped Waterloo Bridge into the Thames and took a bite of it, causing them both to howl. A massive food fight ensued, with Sherlock and Lestrade both ganging up against John. The table was overturned, dinner was ruined, and they ended up getting takeaway yet again. A rather pleasant evening after all, John thought, watching Lestrade pick bits of arugula out of Sherlock’s hair when they were finally sprawled out exhausted in front of the telly.

Sherlock, watching him watch, settled his head down into Lestrade’s lap and his feet in John’s, then pulled out his phone and began to text, ignoring them both.

*

And so they muddled along. As three weapon-like people who sometimes shared a living space, they fit together messily: angles at odds, more often than not. They fell into a comfortable position only on occasion and by accident before jarring loose again with two- or three-way arguments. All of them worked long hours, though, and fortunately (John thought, guiltily) there was no shortage of crime in London, so it wasn’t very often that they had the leisure to get on one another’s nerves. They did work rather nicely together as a murder-solving team. Or a murder-solving detective and his two reasonably adequate assistants, as Sherlock would have it.

There were times, too, when they fit together in other ways. Not often. John got half-plastered, once, and let Lestrade stroke him off while Sherlock was in their bed. He kept his eyes closed for most of it, determined to narrow his perceptions down to the silky slide of Lestrade’s hand on him, Lestrade’s low voice murmuring encouragement into his ear. Only at the very end he heard Sherlock make a soft choked-off noise, and opened his eyes to find the two of them kissing, over his head. _Fuck that’s hot,_ John gasped out, and laughed as he came.

"Yeah, that's--oh, god," Lestrade whimpered, straining hard against John's hip.

"Beautiful," Sherlock murmured approvingly.

"Now you?” John asked, when he’d got his voice back.

“No,” Sherlock said, heavy-eyed with pleasure, breathing warmly into John’s hair. “I’m good.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [An Impossible Shape: the Triangular Geometry of Flawed Hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820452) by [alltoseek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoseek/pseuds/alltoseek)




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